To celebrate Vikings Live, we have replaced our Roman alphabet with the runic alphabet used by the Vikings, the Scandinavian ‘Younger Futhark’. The ‘Younger Futhark’ has only 16 letters, so we have used some of the runic letters more than once or combined two runes for one Roman letter.

Conservation facilities

The Museum’s conservation team is
internationally recognised for its ground breaking work, which
brings new knowledge and creates new techniques which are shared
with museums throughout the world.

Previous conservation facilities were dispersed across the main
site (with the organics section located off-site) in ten workshops
and studios, several of which were in the basements of terraced
properties around the Museum perimeter.

With new centralised facilities providing modern laboratories,
studios and library facilities, the Museum can continue to maintain
the highest standards of care for the objects it looks after.

The new Centre provides a series of state of the art
conservation studios appropriate for a world class institution.
Studios are arranged under large roof lights in order to make
maximum use of the high quality north light required for many
conservation activities.

The large flexible floor plate provides conservators with the
flexibility to configure and reconfigure their spaces. Long term
flexibility has been built into the building’s design to take into
account the future development of conservation techniques.